Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day

Merriam-Webster

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Build your vocabulary with Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day! Each day a Merriam-Webster editor offers insight into a fascinating new word -- explaining its meaning, current use, and little-known details about its origin.

bogart

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for January 6, 2016 is: bogart \BOH-gahrt\ verb 1 : bully, intimidate 2 : to use or consume without sharing Examples: Three of the older girls bogarted the ice cream, ignoring the other girls' pleas for them to share. "Cornwell disputes the group's claim for April 19 and says it and other groups arebogartingthe park by reserving Saturdays in the spring to prevent other festivals in Candler Park other than their own." — Carla Caldwell, The Atlanta Business Chronicle, 15 Nov. 2015 Did you know? The legendary film actor Humphrey Bogart was known for playing a range of tough characters in a series of films throughout the 1940s and 1950s, including The Maltese Falcon, Casablanca, The African Queen, and The Treasure of the Sierra Madre. The men he portrayed often possessed a cool, hardened exterior that occasionally let forth a suggestion of romantic or idealistic sentimentality. Bogart also had a unique method of smoking cigarettes in these pictures—letting the butt dangle from his mouth without removing it until it was almost entirely consumed. Some believe that this habit inspired the current meaning of bogart, which was once limited to the phrase "Don't bogart that joint [marijuana cigarette]," as popularized by a song on the soundtrack to the film Easy Rider, among other things. Today bogart can be applied to hogging almost anything.

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